Chapter 18
634 Words
83
“YOU’RE SUNK!”
Alien cells must have infected Whobert before she noticed the dog had the hand. Then the canine ears overheard Mac’s con-versation with Stu and the alien intelligence understood it. Oh, God. Stu never had a chance.
Were those footsteps? The wind had dropped, but it could still hide or alter sounds. So could falling snow. She strained her ears—yes. Footsteps, approaching from every side.
No doubt the alien took pains to infect ev-eryone else while she was incommunicado. Even with increasing numbers, it wouldn’t have been a quick process—the total crew and cast numbered almost 350 people. But they were after her now. And, after weeks of pressure-cooker shooting on location, they knew her well.
But the space invader didn’t have access only to the infected people’s experiences, thoughts, and traits.
It had access to every movie, show, game, book, magazine, video, and website in their memories. It had absorbed centuries’ worth of human entertainment, history, biology, sociology, and psychology—and mixed and blended them all with its otherworldly intel-lect and capabilities.
Mac didn’t face merely a near-indestruc-tible alien foe, bent implacably on replacing all life on earth.
It was a group mind of incalculable knowledge and insight.
That didn’t mean it knew everything.
Mac activated Stu’s satphone and punched in a number she’d never pro-grammed into a phone or typed into a file or written down or shared with anyone. A number she’d been given when she last saw her handler, the woman who’d recruited her for the CIA when she’d retired from the U.S. Army Military Police Corps. The woman who had summoned her for face-to-face dis-cussion of her upcoming undercover Antarc-tic operation.
Yes, Mac had a family story about her great-grandfather.
Yes, something had happened that had made him warn his family never to go south of the equator.
But Mac knew no more than that, until her handler told her.
There was an immediate click in her ear, and a voice: “Report.”
She said, “Fire at the pole.”
As she pocketed the satphone, the mob was sublimating from the snowfall. Tenta-cled blue things snarled at her with serpen-tine fangs and glared at her with live-coal eyes. Why pretend, when you’ve got the last uninfected person surrounded?
Instantly, she drew her Glock and fired, piercing a red eye and rousing a wrathful screech. But all the things flinched and be-gan backing away. They ducked and weaved, hot eyes fixed on her as they melted into the swirling snow.
“Can’t tell where I’m going to shoot next, can you?” Mac laughed. “Seems it’s not so easy to read an earthling’s thoughts when she’s higher than the satellites.”
She pivoted and fired, and an angry-bull bellow came through the snowfall.
“Bullets can’t kill you, but you’ve been counting. You know how many rounds I have left, and you know a gunshot wound hurts almost as much as a kidney stone. And you’ve got a plan. Some of you will keep me corralled until I run out of rounds or hypo-thermia scrambles my wits, while the rest of you light out for the Antarctic bases.”
She returned her Glock to her belt and straddled the nearest snowmobile.
“It’s a cunning plan, but you forgot some-thing: The set production assistant’s duties include driving, and I was put in charge of the motor vehicle keys. And they’re in the flaming wreck of my container. Most of them, anyway.”
As angry cries came from every side, Mac reached in her parka pocket and with-drew the bulky sock. Since she didn’t enjoy being jabbed by sharpish points, she bundled up the keys she carried. As a result, her key-ring made no noise, and security didn’t think
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